psuhoffman

Ya well it’s hard to get “blue” even in a trough when the averages are calculated on a 30 year period that ended 5 years ago and it’s continuously getting warmer. The actual average base state right now in a neutral pattern is warmer than the averages those plots are calculated with. That’s one of the reasons why many times when you look at a long range plot there is no blue anywhere.

My one hope is that as we enter a warmer climate maybe the dry isn’t as dry and the cold is still cold enough. It’s a narrow target we’re aiming for though. But 2014 does prove it’s possible. But not the most likely outcome imo. I don’t find perfect track rainstorms funny but everyone has their own sense of humor. Ya 2017 and 1951 sucked but so did 2001 and 2009. None of them were good so not sure why you highlighted those 2 specifically.

There’s a trough in the east on that plot.

Some of my analogs are in there too. Problem is while they are cold most of them were not snowy years.

Top 5 were 2008-9, 2016-17, 2000-01, 1950-51, 1954-55

One of the limiting factors to this winter’s potential imo is there was a uniform characteristic across all my analogs, they started and ended cold. But the “snowiest” part of winter was the warmest in all of them! It’s really difficult for us to get a snowy winter without timing up a cold period somewhere between Jan 10-Feb 20 and that period was universally warm across all the analogs I identified. That leaves us nibbling on the edges so to speak. It could be worse. We’ve had several wall to wall torches recently. And there was some snow across our area in December in all the analogs so I do expect we get some snow soon…but it’s probably something small. This isn’t anything specific to the pattern (other than the fact it is NS dominant) just statistical probabilities.

No help

It takes special expertise when handling such a large bird.

Happy thanksgiving

It’s really hard to contain him when you don’t see him much.

This might seem political but I swear it’s really about why our method of argumentation and debate has become so dysfunctional. For a while now our political discourse has become unproductive because the debates tend to be proxies and not actually substantively about the actual issues motivating both sides. What’s the point even imo, to argue about these stupid side battles that often the person who starts it doesnt even care that much. Even if they lost the debate it wouldn’t change anything because the debate isn’t about anything substantive. But now I’ve noticed this bleeding into our science discourse. Todays spat in the long range thread being exhibit A. The hostility behind that had nothing to do with the exact strength of Siberian high pressure. If we’re going to fight and be hostile why can’t we at least just fight about what’s really aggravating people. Why are we fighting about ancillary substitutes all the time lately?

Snowiest week is the second week of December

Finally got my full winter forecast up, I did make some minor changes based on new information

Sorry this is a little later than usual, I've been busy with some new responsibilities at work. I will also keep this generally brief as I think we all know the general ideas. Major factors PDO and ENSO: We are currently in a cold neutral enso state and expected to remain cold neutral or weak nina status. We are also still entrenched in a deeply negative PDO regime, coming off one of the most negative 3 month periods on record. However, the PDO does show signs if creeping back towards neutral although it is likely to remain solidly negative through winter based on historical analysis of where we are in the cycle. I don't think it really matters all that much if enso is cold neutral or weak nina, if it ends up -.3 or -.7 for the winter...when scouring all the analogs it really didn't make much difference. The flavor of all those -PDO cold enso winters was pretty similar regardless of the exact -enso strength. There are two types of cold enso years...ones that feature a more flat pacific ridge and they are generally warm snowless winters. Think 2002, 2008, 2012, and 2023. Then there are cold enso seasons with a more poleward pacific ridge which tend to be colder across eastern north america. Think 2006, 2009, 2011, 2014, 2018, 2022. The colder years do not always mean significantly more snow though as they are still generally dry and we are stuck between weak southern sliders and northern stream systems in the flow. But determining which flavor the enso will take will determine temps and the chance we have some snow and perhaps if lucky close to median snowfall. Fall Pattern: We were running a consistent -PNA driven pattern through early fall with a warm dry dome of high pressure over eastern N America. We have since transitioned into a -EPO -NAO pattern that shows signs of persisting in some form into and perhaps through December. Minor factors: QBO: We are currently in an extremely positive QBO phase expected to last through winter. This is not considered a major factor but it does make it less likely we see prolonged blocking through winter. Solar: We are still near a solar maximum expected to peak in 2025. However, I have found using solar to predict blocking to be dangerous as the correlation is fairly low and hard to predict if the episode of blocking correlated with the cycle will happen in any given year. Example: The most reliable trend I've been able to indicate is that we almost always get a year of extreme blocking near a solar minimum. It's happened the last 5 cycles. 1977, 1987, 1996, 2010, 2021. But sometimes the blocking comes right at the minimum, sometimes it was the year after the minimum. So even with this most reliable trend, its hard to use it as a reliable predictive tool as at best you have a 50/50 chance which doesn't help improve a seasonal forecasts chance of accuracy much. For this reason I did not weight solar this year in my analog rankings. I found when scoring my methods historically on what I would have predicted based on available data in the fall, I was better off not using solar at all. Methodological Changes I won't go into all the details but I've significantly increased the weighting of my PDO in analog selections. But more importantly, when scoring the PDO, our overall longer term phase of the PDO is as important as the most recent raw numerical number. Not all -1.7 PDO's are the same...there is a big difference between a short term negative drop in the PDO during a more neutral or even positive long term cycle...v the same number during a strongly negative PDO cycle. I've adjusted my scoring of the PDO to account for this. Forecast: We all know the negatives...the combination of enso and pdo that we are in is not good and we know this because we've been suffering through it for most of the last 8 years. So...probably the only question left is does this pattern flip that's just taken place change what the data is telling us about the coming winter.... Yes, but not as much as most of us would probably like. When I factored in some of the most recent pattern analysis into the equations, it did change the analog rankings some. And yes, some of the absolute worst analogs did drop out, but they weren't replaced by blockbuster winters by any means. There just aren't many of those in the weak cold enso, -PDO category. That combo is simply the absolute worst one for snow...and even if we pick out the best analog options from that combo...they just aren't very good. The one exception would be 2014, but its pretty far down on my analogs, that said with the new scoring, it was the next one tied with 2 others that just barely didn't make the cut. The fall pattern progression similarities helped bump it up some, but it still missed the cut. And the others that missed with it weren't nearly as good. Even if I included all 17 seasons I looked at when I started identifying analogs before eliminating many of them...NONE of them came even close to 2014 in terms of snow. It's simply an extreme outlier. Someday it will happen again but my guess is not in my lifetime. But who knows... What years did make the cut. Below is my analog rankings along with the weighting of the 4 point score for each category. So what about this upcoming great looking pattern...guess what all those analogs featured something similar... October was mostly a torch, November was a transitions...and December was very cold Fall-Early Winter Pattern for the top 6 analogs October Mean Pattern But look what it lead to in December....and around November 20 was the transition period also! Dec Temps Dec H5 Mean What about the rest of the winter.... well the pattern itself wasn't awful...on the whole they were near normal temps and all featured some cold periods. And they did all feature SOME snow...but the results in every single one was worse that you would expect given the way they started in December and the generally decent to good pattern mean for the winter as a whole. Winter H5 Winter Temps The general tone of all those winters was generally near normal temps overall but with several periods of true cold, but dry and not a lot of big snowstorms. Several of those years featured more snow south and north of us. Southern sliders missing south and northern stream storms missing north was a feature of all these years. Snowfall Forecast The raw predicted snowfall based on the analogs and weighting and my realistic snowfall range expectations DCA: 7.1" (5-10") BWI: 8.3" (6-12") IAD: 9.6" (7-13") RIC: 6.3" (4-9") Manchester: 24.7" (20-30") Northern Shenandoah Valley (10-18") NYC: 30.5" You can see that snowfall increases dramatically just north of us. While the changes in the calculations based on the current pattern did help us...it bumped up our expected snowfall a couple inches across the board and eliminated all the complete no snow dud years...it really helped places just north of us. It significantly increased the snowfall projections for Philly to Boston for example. We are just too far south to typically cash in on the northern stream dominant patterns even in the "colder" variety of nina, which I believe this will be. Temperature Forecast Overall near normal temps December Below Avg Temps January: Near normal temps Feb: Above normal Temps March: Below Normal Temps

I finally had a chance to finish my winter forecast and it adjusted my numbers just a slight bit DCA: 7.1" IAD: 9.6" BWI: 8.3" RIC: 6.3" SBY: 6.7"

Is it blasphemy that I’m kinda rooting against the thanksgiving threat. The whole family is getting together at my brothers in northern VA Wednesday to Saturday, parents brother sister and a ton of kids… I kinda just want to relax and enjoy and not be stressed tracking snow.

The melt has begun. Already up to 40 and feels really nice out. I don’t think qpf was too crazy here. Maybe .5. The ratios ended up not that low, surface stayed near freezing and the snow growth was pretty good. Had it been 3-4 degrees colder would have been a 15 or even 20-1 ratio type snow.

True, but redundant since even if it were possible to get clippers in the warm regimes absent a northerly flow out of Canada or a sharp thermal gradient to fuel them…they’d just be rain anyways. Clippers are just a label for weak NS waves along the arctic boundary. No arctic boundary. No clippers. I get the sentiment but the issue is bigger than just “clippers disappeared”. That’s just an effect of the whole winter patterns having been wrong in so many ways most of the last 8 years. Quote

One of my best friends has a winter cabin in Vermont and unless you want to add 30 miles you have to take a dirt road. Last winter I made the mistake of trying it in about 6” of snow. I made it. But I’ll just add the extra 30 miles next time.

32/31 just snizzle now 4.2” total FWIW when I did my analysis of how predictive early snow was for a season….the best time to get a first snow up here was late November and the best amount was between 3-5”

Northern stream wave dives out of western Canada and digs south of us. That’s something we rarely see recently. If that actually happened then I’d believe maybe this is a anomalous season.

32/31 Just hit 4" exactly Took a little drive around the area on my way to picking up the kids from school. Other than that storm in Dec 2020, this was the next biggest difference based on elevation. As I drove around between about 700-1100 feet there were huge differences. Above 1000 feet is 3"+ with snow even sticking to the roads some...between 800-1000 feet is 1-2" and below 800ft near lineboro there was almost nothing on the ground and it was 35 and mixing with rain. Just going up and down 100 feet on the hills you could see a difference around the area. Most snow I saw was my house here on top of Dug Hill and the Parrs ridgeline along York St north of Manchester.

I doubt it would come to that...but there are a couple houses on the street where I can't say with 100% certainty it wouldnt... I made the mistake of trying to go door to door in the neighborhood to see if someone knew who owned a cat that came into my house and wouldn't leave one winter... there were some uncomfortable encounters. There are some weird paranoid people around here...

This is a nice little loop near the PA border that always has good snow...it's mostly above 1000ft and passes right by the highest elevation east of the Appalachian trail in MD, its about 50 feet higher up than me! Another option if you drive south on 30 into Manchester and turn left onto York St at the main light in town...that road takes you up along a ridge for a few miles and they always have a lot of snow there also. I would tell you to just drive up my road but its a private drive dead end lol. I don't mind but if you pick the wrong house to try to turn around in...well just don't.

Just hit 3” looks like my backyard course is closed for the season